The Cyber Lions' jury president, P.J. Pereira, vice president and executive creative director at San Francisco’s AKQA, noted that both winners “had something special" and "were brave examples of how the Web could be used to help build up a brand.”

Viewers type in confessions
The Method Web site allows viewers to type in confessions, which then appear on a woman’s hand and get washed away with a Method soaping. Simultaneously, a female voice gives the user a witty, personalized “scolding” for the wrongdoings. “Come Clean is a very personal experience that will be hard to show on the stage,” Mr. Pereira said, referring to this evening’s awards ceremony. “You’ll have to go on and make your own confessions because the Web site gives it to you in a very human and powerful way.”

The Brazilian Grand Prix winner uses a simple webcam to show how Henkel’s Super Bonder Instant Glue truly works. “It’s a wonderful and breakthrough exercise of something that’s been around for a while, webcams,” Mr. Pereira explained. “There’s nothing totally new about that, but ... here they’ve done it in such a real way. There’s no theater, nothing between you and the brand. More than that, it’s such a wonderful product demonstration, which is still a great way of doing advertising.”

Overall, the jury expressed genuine excitement over this year’s entries and judging process.

Groundbreaking work
“Unlike TV and other media forms, this medium changes by the minute. Everyone here was so excited to see the big idea that no one’s seen before,” said Scott Rodgers, creative director at the U.K.’s EuroRSCG Interaction. “I think that’s why the 'Reality Advertising' piece, although it may look simple on the surface, is actually a groundbreaking piece of work. It’s a product demonstration but in real time over the Web, which has never been done before."

The jury this year bestowed a total of 93 Lions, including 15 gold, down 10 from last year’s 25. Grand Prix-winning countries Brazil and the U.S. earned three golds each, the U.K. won two, and one each went to Canada, Germany, Korea, Japan, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. U.S. golds were divided between Crispin Porter & Bogusky, for its Mini “Counterfeit” Web effort, R/GA for the Nike Lab Holiday 04 Web site, and San Francisco’s Mekanism, for its comedic online serial “The True Adventures of Chad” for Sega of America.

Almost all winners included video
In comment on new trends in online advertising, Mr. Pereira noted that “video is definitely what can be called the official format of content for the Web now. Almost all of the winners had some kind of video content inside their Web sites, whether it was big or just a detail.”

He added, however, “That’s not enough. If there’s a lot of video, you’re just giving more impact to the work that you’re doing, and if the message is bad, you’re going to be even worse. So the second conclusion was that although video is powerful, it’s still about giving a fresh, emotional brand experience that uses the medium to its limit, which is what the two Grand Prix show.”

Thirdly, Mr. Pereira noted that perhaps because of video, the cyber playing field has shifted from being dominated by interactive shops. “It seems that with video, the offline agencies have felt a new opportunity and they went into the online agencies’ bedroom and woke them up. And they have done a great job. Online and offline agencies are now competing on the same territory and it’s going to be great for the industry. Both sides have a lot to learn from each other, and there a lot of things that we can improve by watching what the other side is doing.”

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Ann-Christine Diaz

Ann-Christine Diaz is the Creativity Editor at Ad Age. She has been covering the creative world of advertising and marketing for more than a decade. Outside of the job, she can be found getting in touch with her own creativity.